Visual Rhetoric and Classical Rhetoric
The "canonical approach" to studying visual rhetoric relates visual concepts to the canons of Western classical rhetoric (Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria and Pronuntiatio). In the textbook Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators, its authors list six canons which guide the rhetorical impact of a document: arrangement, emphasis, clarity, conciseness, tone and ethos. According to Kostelnick and Roberts these canons can be defined as:
- Arrangement – “the organization of visual elements so that readers can see their structure”
- Emphasis – making certain parts more prominent than others by changing its size, shape and color.
- Clarity – helps the reader to “decode the message, to understand it quickly and completely”
- Conciseness – “generating designs that are appropriately succinct to a particular situation”
- Tone – tone reveals the designer’s attitude towards the subject matter
- Ethos – earning the trust of the person receiving the message.
These six visual cognates provide an extension of classical rhetoric that can be used as a starting point for analyzing images rhetorically.
Read more about this topic: Visual Rhetoric
Famous quotes containing the words visual, rhetoric and/or classical:
“For women ... bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can’t possibly fit. Without these visual references, each individual woman’s body demands to be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)